“Two negatives produce a positive,” declared the middle school math teacher, “but two positives never produce a negative.”
A teenage girl in the front row rolled her eyes and snarled, “Yeah, right.”
There is something deliciously satisfying about sarcasm: the facade of faux acceptance, the sneering tone, the sadistic twist of a verbal knife without saying anything overtly injurious. It’s no wonder that research confirms the common perception that sarcastic people are smarter.
That correlation makes it hard to sell the argument that sarcasm may be the worst thing in the world for us. As evidence, however, we turn to this entry from the Ethical Lexicon:
Stultify (stuhl-tuh-fahy/stul·ti·fy) verb
To cause a loss of enthusiasm through ridicule, sarcasm, or embarrassment; to render absurdly or wholly futile or ineffectual, especially by degrading or frustrating means.
Displaying my quick-wittedness might reward me with the buzz of landing a good zinger and the adoration of bystanders. I might even strengthen my neural pathways and sharpen my capacity to deliver future quips. But all those benefits can be erased in the same instant by the damage I do to my relationships and to the culture of my community.
Sarcasm has deep roots
About 40 years ago, I was waiting for my college roommate to finish cleaning up in the kitchen so I could make myself lunch. He backed away from the sink but seemed to linger for a moment, so I asked, “Are you through here?”
He whipped around and snapped at me, “What’s that supposed to mean?”
I was genuinely bewildered. “What is your problem? I just asked you a simple question.”
Four decades later, I can still hear his response: “Maybe if every word out of your mouth wasn’t a sarcastic remark, I wouldn’t have taken it that way.”
User warning: This is not the recommended way to give rebuke, even when it’s justified. Opening fire with both barrels will almost inevitably provoke escalation. But despite my roomie’s lack of diplomacy, I realized in the moment that his rebuke was indeed justified, that I had cultivated the reflex of responding sarcastically to almost any situation.
Sarcasm has rooted itself deeply in our culture. Late-night comics vie for audiences by trying to outdo one another in the viciousness of their putdowns. True, they make us laugh and impress us with the keenness of their jabs. But when we learn from their example, what impact do we have on our environment by speaking with gratuitous malevolence? How can a culture of ethical sensitivity, mutual respect, and collaborative productivity flourish when the witty perpetually stalk victims and the civil constantly find themselves in the crosshairs?
The word sarcasm derives from the Greek sarkazo, to tear flesh like dogs, to speak bitterly. Hence, a cutting expression, a biting remark, and gnashing one’s teeth. Hardly the kind of expression that promotes a healthy workplace. Will soft-spoken employees risk floating half-developed ideas if they can expect a vicious retort in response to their initiatives?
Sarcasm versus irony
On the other extreme, comics have been lamenting for years that the shift toward social hypersensitivity has made it almost impossible to be funny without being accused of hate speech. So we don’t want to go overboard by eliminating humor from the workplace, either. Since laughter is unquestionably the best medicine, how can we find the funny, if not at someone else’s expense?
The healthy alternative to sarcasm is irony. Sadly, the distinction between the two has grown even more blurred than when I addressed the topic in my 2015 book, Proverbial Beauty. Back then, Dictionary.com defined irony as exhibiting superior subtlety and wit through the structure of language.
In contrast, sarcasm resorts to coarse ridicule and mockery through vocal inflection. It is particularly instructive to note that deaf people cannot recognize tonal sarcasm but have less trouble with verbal irony.
Irony is an admission of one’s own limitations; sarcasm is an assertion of one’s own superiority. Irony allows others to join in on the joke; sarcasm is always at someone else’s expense. An article in the old Civilization Magazine illustrated this distinction as the difference between late night hosts Johnny Carson and David Letterman. The ironic Carson could laugh at himself. The sarcastic Letterman was always laughing at you.
There’s a time and a place
As with all things, sarcasm does have its time and place. The first recorded example of sarcastic rhetoric appears in Exodus. Trapped against the sea with Pharoah’s army descending upon them, the Israelites cry out to Moses in despair: “Were there not enough graves in Egypt that you had to bring us into the desert to die?” In this case, we can excuse their stinging repartee. With a phalanx of enemy chariots bearing down on you, a little dark humor is an understandable defense mechanism.
Indeed, if sarcasm has any redeeming value, it lies in the advantage of an oblique rhetorical device over direct assertion. Done artlessly, this results in confusion or insult. But with the right delivery we can win more buy-in by allowing colleagues the opportunity to work their own way to our conclusions rather than browbeating, pontificating, or spoon-feeding them.
A small measure of indirect cleverness may promote deeper thought and more productive contemplation by channeling the Socratic method. Avoid the stultifying humor of late-night comedy in the workplace, and you will likely have everyone come out smiling.
Yonason Goldson works with business leaders to build a culture of ethics that earns trust, sparks initiative, and limits liability. He is an award-winning podcast host, TEDx speaker, and author of Grappling With the Gray: An Ethical Handbook for Personal Success and Business Prosperity.
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